It may not sound appealing, but pairing stout and oysters is a Victorian-age tradition.

Photograph by: Adam McDowell
, For Postmedia News

The proposition: stout and raw oysters. To the adventuresome eater, it's an exquisite match of grain and sea, a humble old standby and a tasty way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. To the squeamish, Towning says, it sounds "like worms and beer."

"We get disgust and we get amazement at how good it tastes," says the owner of Oyster restaurant in Vancouver.

It can be a challenge to explain what works about the unlikely culinary pairing of live seafood with black, chewy, flavourful beer. Patrick McMurray has given it careful thought. The owner of Toronto's Ceili Cottage and Starfish (an Irish pub and oyster bar, respectively), he says the burnt coffee flavour of the stout meshes with the salt and minerals of the oyster. "They just kind of work together, [as if] holding hands across the seafloor."

This isn't some sort of newfangled foodie gimmick. "Humans have been eating oysters for millions of years," notes McMurray, a world champion oyster shucker who also goes by the nickname "Shucker Paddy." And they joined up with "porter" in the 1700s, almost as soon as the fashionable new dark beer was invented. (The synonymous terms "stout porter" and just "stout" came later.)

Victorians in the British Isles lapped up oysters and stout, an unpretentious delicacy that fit a humble budget on a special occasion. Sometimes the occasion was risqué. For bon vivant Mr. Carroll of the 1876 novel Gerald Boyne, porter and lemon-seasoned oysters fuel an appetite for chasing skirts (hoop skirts, that is). In The Mystery of Orleton Manor (1873), Marion is playfully scandalized when Sam asks her out for oysters and stout - unchaperoned!

Eventually the habit faded, enough that George Orwell's 1944 phrase "a pleasant little whiff of oysters and brown stout" referred to a sentimental vision of the Victorian age.

Still, the oyster-stout tradition persisted in certain pockets. The odd pub even offered oyster stout, the natural - some would say unnatural - culmination of the idea. Some "oyster stouts" are simply sweetish stouts that the brewery feels would pair especially nicely with raw mollusc. But there are indeed stouts infused with oyster, and Canadian versions thereof.

Stout flavoured with oyster liquor is occasionally on tap at Starfish in Toronto thanks to a partnership with Durham County Brewing. Vancouver's Oyster works in conjunction with R&B Brewing to make its fishy brew. "They get thrown into the vat, the live oyster and the shell," Towning says. The formula works out to roughly one oyster per 16 ounces of beer.

After three weeks in the drink, the oysters are removed and the beer filtered. If this is still too daunting a proposition for the queasy - "It really is a tough sell," Towning concedes - the familiar, nonfishy Guinness or Murphy's will pair nicely with oysters. Maltier brands such as McAuslan Oatmeal Stout taste even better.

McMurray says humble domestic Malpeque oysters are "perfectly fine" for a date with porter. But he prefers the Galway flat variety, specially delivered from Ireland. "The texture of them is very meaty and firm and the flavour is just big, bold ocean - sea salt up front, a grassy note or a seaweed-y note in the middle, and a dry palate finish," he explains. "It goes with the roasted malts of the stout."

The Galway flats' pedigree also lets Shucker Paddy spin a little yarn about the coastal areas they hail from.

"You have to tell them a story. The storytelling persuades them, in the end, to try it."

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